Wednesday, February 22, 2012

How To Make Money On Your Ass

Viggle has created a new app for the iPhone that rewards you for the time you and your fanny spend parked in front of the TV. And I say it's about time. We're not doing this for our health, you know. The phone recognizes what shows are on and awards you points for minutes spent watching--more for certain shows, and bonuses for commercials. Accumulate enough points and you can win a five-dollar credit at Burger King. The Sloth Fairy slides the credit right into your phone, and you can redeem it if you ever scrape yourself off the sofa. To thwart people who cheat by leaving their phones in the TV room by itself, the app will be triggered by a methane detector. Viggle is hoping to increase the size of the TV audience, and this should do it.

I spend more time than I probably should watching TV. My intellect is too weak to overrule my body, which overvalues physical comfort, and whenever I'm comfortable I do not care to be dislodged. If I'm stretched out on a recliner in a quilt with a lap mammal and a remote, torpor ambles right to the top of my list of virtues. I also have a real hard time getting out of a hot shower, where you don't even really need to leave to pee. Bed is the best of all. I won't get out of it until I have to. I sleep in a cold room under a stack of quilts high enough to press a diamond out of a briquette. I can ignore a sense of duty for hours before removing myself. The last time I felt as good as I feel in bed, I was in a uterus.

We don't use any fancy devices and have only an old-fashioned cable TV, so our habit is to find a show we like and a channel that syndicates it and schedules it hour after hour for months on end. The Boston Legal years are a blur. Next up was the House marathon. We've seen every episode of House three times but keep thinking there might be one we've missed. I began to suspect I had spent too much time in front of the tube the day our neighbor's basement flooded. A committee convened, but nobody could figure out where the water was coming in; the walls appeared dry; it seemed possible it was coming up from the sewer through the bathroom drain, but there was no good explanation. Things were getting tense, as they always do when men are equally confounded but don't think they can pitch a hissy fit in front of each other. After about a half hour of batting around possible diagnoses, I found myself thinking:  it's sarcoidosis. It's always sarcoidosis. Except it couldn't be sarcoidosis, because we'd only been there a half hour. In another fifteen minutes it would look like rhabdo or a rare tropical infection. I poked at the wallboard thoughtfully, with an air of engagement, and let the men puzzle it out, confident that the solution would arrive at the 55-minute mark.

The morning I woke up with the theme to Two And A Half Men going through my head, I knew I had a problem, but that I'd think about it after logging another couple hours in bed. Things are often clearer in the light of day.

But that night, in the blue television light, I realized I have no problem at all. I'm going to get me an iPhone with a Viggle app and go for the grand prize: ComaDoze, the memory-foam recliner with the built-in Cheez Doodle dispenser and insulin pump. Don't bother me, I'm working.

72 comments:

  1. methane detector? ha! just leave the television on with my dog in the room. That ComaDoze would be yours in no time!

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    1. I had totally not thought of that. Now. How can we get it to make the proper distinction? Ideas?

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  2. Making money on your ass. For a worrisome moment I feared you'd taken up a certain other, quite ancient profession. But sloth - that's something I'm quite comfortable with and it rates quite high in my book. If my natural inclinations had their way, I'd soon look like Jabba The Hut and wind up with the emergency squad knocking down a wall to extract my 800 pound body, Cheez Doodle dispenser, insulin pump and all.

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    1. Most people are comfortable with sloth. That's its hook.

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  3. "I sleep in a cold room under a stack of quilts high enough to press a diamond out of a briquette" - I like that!

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  4. No, we are definitely not "doing it for our health" but we keep doing it. It was the Big Bang marathon that got me.

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    1. Still in my future, as is Weeds, the Sopranos, Downton Abbey--I need to live a long time to see all this, and I'm sure I will if I sit very very quietly.

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  5. ON rather than WITH was the operative word but I too had to read it twice. I need one of those ComaDoze pillows, sans cheese doodles and insulin, as my office chair is the only comfortable on in the house.
    I take it the stack of quilts accounts for your being a diamond in the rough?

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  6. My lap mammal prefers NCIS marathons and would just as soon that I not multi-task by knitting while watching TV. Only petting cats while watching TV is allowed. Pootie is in your quilt - too cute. "The last time I felt as good as I feel in bed, I was in a uterus." Exactly.

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    1. The only hand-work I do in front of the TV is binding quilts, and the lap mammal just slides in underneath. As long as she doesn't notice the pincushion I'm home free.

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  7. "I also have a real hard time getting out of a hot shower, where you don't even really need to leave to pee." Hahahah...

    Dear Lord, I think we were college roommates.

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  8. Oh, I loved this. I think the Sloth Fairy has visited more homes than just yours, Murr. Thank you for the smiles and grins of recognition. :-)

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    1. When your ideals don't match your reality, you need to invent new fairies.

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  9. Holy shit but you're funny.

    What a fabulous way to start the day, laughing at your silliness. I absolutely love it.

    Pearl

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  10. YOur quilts are awesome! And I adore Pootie's teddy bear pajamas.

    For some reason, the title led me to think that you had acquired another quadruped and were renting it out for yard maintenance and fertilization.

    I, too, have been channeling my inner sloth, working on my power-lounging, pausing occasionally for a nice brisk nap. " Had I heath of pearl and breath of lilies, I would call it ennui, but instead I must confess to laziness." P.B.Shelly.

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    1. "A nice, brisk nap." I'm totally using that.

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    2. No, no. NOT teddy bear PJs. Little fluffy sheep. And how do I know? I recognize the fabric. I made myself nighties in both blue sheepies and pink sheepies. So easy to count.

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  11. Love it! And it's good to know that being slothful can be considered a profession now, one that earns fast food money! And I'm with pcflamingo---the NCIS marathon, but in my case, with knitting.
    Love the jammies on your bear!

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  12. Wow, like daisyfae all I have to do is leave my dog and the phone in the room and I could be dining at burger king forever.

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    1. One of my early baby-sitting gigs was for a couple with five Great Danes. Talk about your fug.

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  13. Oooh, I want the Cheez Doodle dispenser!

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    1. I visualize it with a little pop-up PEZ head. My PEZ dispenser was Bullwinkle. (My lunch box was Quick Draw McGraw.)

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  14. You aren't just making up the Viggle App, are you!? It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad...

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  15. For years, I've despaired that the blog world is a wasteland of untalented writers typing with entirely-too-much enthusiasm about how they couldn't find their stack of coupons once they got to the grocery store.

    Thank you for redeeming the cybersphereoblogland for me. All I ask is to read some well-written nonsense that actually makes valid underlying points. Oh, and also that bloggers stage photos of themselves sleeping under heaps of quilts with teddy bears standing watch.

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  16. Murr, you just keep getting better and better. What would I do without you?

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  17. When I heard that every woman was sitting on a million dollars I didn't believe it. You have convinced me otherwise. I also have a small herd of lap mammals - very comforting.

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    1. Reminds me of Joni Mitchell's line--"I'm a pretty good cook...sittin' on my groceries..."

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  18. A diamond in the rough under a heap 'o quilts at bed time. Then a very sparkling, brilliant gem at blogpost time. Thanks for describing how I struggle every day to move my but!

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    1. Once I get mine going I do fine, but the initial movement is a bear. Well I don't mean "movement." Those are fine.

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    2. Hahaha. Move my butt becomes 'movement' on a whole other level. I wish I had the ability to be that swift with letters.
      Gotta run while I still have the nimbleness to do so.

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  19. I would watch Northern Exposure in its constant loop, I believe it was the A&E channel, so many times. I have a rare gem: I recorded a VHS tape that has the final episode at the beginning of the two hour tape, and then the very first episode, of course recorded in that order.

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  20. Okay, I read the whole thing, but the entire time I was too distracted by the fact that you actually quilted Pootie INTO your quilt.
    I have to do this!!!

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    1. I think I have at least three quilts with Pootie in them somewhere. I don't recommend doing this one, with the tumbling blocks. Tumbling blocks are a pain.

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  21. //Cheez Doodle dispenser//

    .... if you could do that... the world would beat a path to your door.... and in all probability, haul you away into rehab. But it does sound like a neato-keen-spiffy idea to me.

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  22. We seem to be on the same wavelength today. Let's raise our glasses to lethargy! No, wait. That would involve effort.

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  23. It's The Walking Dead around here lately. Just in case you need something else to watch while you earn your BK bucks.

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    1. Watching zombies on TV. Somehow that takes torpor to a whole new level.

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  24. OK, I'm not going to say anything about NASCAR, baseball or golf, three snoozers that will guarantee the prize, especially if there's an overfed dog in the tomb, ah, I mean, room.

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    1. If I ever had a hankering for another dog, y'all are making me rethink it. And careful what you say about my baseball! Okay, it can be a little slow.

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  25. The theme for Big Bang Theory has been my earworm for months now. I do like your style of watching, but House, well, mainly (haven't watched it in a while) but it's mainly squabbling young residents, misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis, House being inappropriate and abusive, House making inappropropriate comments about Cuddy's ass, patient exercising disgusting symptoms, House saving the day at the last instant and not explanation as to who is going to pay the medical bills.
    I do love your blog, I do.

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    1. You get no argument here. That's exactly what House is. Every time. I'm soothed by repetition.

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  26. The sloth fairy....oh, that fairy has lived here for such a long time now...I think s/he is a member of the family.
    Wait, gotta go-Modern Family is on-

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  27. You can tell the Sloth Fairy has been around because she leaves drool under your pillow.

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    1. Ah. This explains quite a lot. I think the Sloth Fairy and her cousin live in this home. (There is often drool under two pillows)

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  28. If someone would simply promise me a biscuit and tea, I'd watch back to back Downton Abbeys.

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  29. Swell stuff as usual,Murr.I would ony add a stack of somewhat raunchy novels at my side with cheese doodle dispenser to complete the ideal weight gain fantasy(why do"they"always say lose?)goes right back to your New Year's resolution,eh?

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    1. I have my moments when I think it would be an interesting bit of performance art to make myself the same size in every dimension. Purely for art's sake.

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  30. Holy snapple!

    "The Sloth Fairy slides the credit right into your phone"

    Um…. yes please.

    *signs up immediately*

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  31. A depressing if very cute approach to sloth. I watched two solid hours of Lost tonight, so I guess I'll sign up.

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    1. There's no point in not getting paid for it if you can get paid for it. FYI: American Idol gets you more points.

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  32. Oh shit. I've been in a meeting for three hours and this just made it all go away. Thanks everso. Seriously. I just spewed the two strands of leftover chicken spaghetti onto my lap,missing the monitor that everyone else spews on. Seriously, thank you.

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    1. You're going to want to clean that up, before people start offering you worming medicine.

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  33. If you remove the screaming and the murdering watching sport is the same as watching "lost". Your arse stays put. Good. Maybe 3 or 4 calory diffs but not more

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    1. The point is to keep the arse stationary. It can vibrate every now and then, but that's all.

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  34. I adore this post. I truly thought we were the only ones plastered to NCIS marathons thinking we missed something..... I have an excuse for my TV addiction.... I worked long and hard with no TV within sight, then I retired.... there was soooooo much I missed.... :}

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